


A Righteous Pawn

by seimaisin



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Angst, Blogging, Gen, POV Female Character, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Excerpts from the private blog of Georgette "Buffy" Meissonier, written during the Ryman presidential campaign, 2040.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Righteous Pawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheByronicMan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheByronicMan/gifts).



_From the private blog of Buffy Meissonier, January 24th, 2040_

I keep all the recordings I make of Sunday Mass. Most of them are boring, but you never know when you might need a little peaceful ritual in your life. There’s no going to church here on the road, not at the pace we’re moving. So it’s comforting, to be able to go back and watch previous Sundays, to hear Father Cho’s voice and pretend I’m back in California. 

Usually, I just pick a Mass at random. But today, I chose one I know by heart. It’s from the summer before last - I can see everyone sweating in the pews, probably sticking to the wood and praying for Father Cho to hurry up and get on with it. (The air conditioning never has been the best in there, especially with a full house.) But Father Cho never hurried, especially during his homilies. This particular Sunday, he broached the always-controversial topic of God’s involvement in the spread of Kellis-Amberlee. 

“People often ask me,” he began, “if I believe Kellis-Amberlee is God’s punishment on a sinful society. And my answer is always the same - no. No, despite what the Old Testament would have you believe, I do not think our God is that vengeful. I think He watched the virus’s origins and despaired, seeing how the work of many different men - all of whom had the best of intentions - could combine to destroy so many of us. We are all His children, and as far as I’m concerned, He would never wish this kind of torture on us.”

“However,” he continued, leaning forward on the pulpit, “I do believe that the aftermath of this dreadful disease has given the world an opportunity. An opportunity to gather, to humble ourselves, to bring ourselves closer to His embrace. In this world we find ourselves in, our lives are even more of a miracle than they were before. We don’t know how much time we have - we never have, of course, but the threat of amplification makes our own mortality seem that much more imminent. I see some of you squirming, and I know how frightening that can be. We don’t like to think about our mortality. We’d rather pretend it doesn’t exist, up until the very moment it stares us in the face. But here, now, I’m telling you to consider it. Not just consider it; embrace it! Our time here is short. That means we need to squeeze every last drop of love, of hope, of goodness out of the moments we have. To effect what change we can on the world, while we’re here.”

“Some people believe that we’re experiencing God’s vengeance. I believe that we’re experiencing His everlasting love. We just have to be open enough to see it.”

God help me, I was open tonight. I was given an opportunity to help change the world, to bring people closer to God, and I took it. 

Dear God, I hope I did the right thing.

*

_February 19th, 2040_

Tonight, while we were all sitting around, Shaun asked me about Alaska. “Why don’t you ever use Alaska in your stories?” My immediate response was to tell him that I was surprised he’d read my stories enough to know what topics I did and didn’t cover - and, in fact, that I was shocked that he could read at all. That set Georgia off, of course, and soon she and I were rattling off a list of ridiculous reading material that someone of Shaun’s obviously limited intelligence could handle. I was glad they were so easily distracted. Too much political nonsense on their minds, I guess; now is not the time to be interested in penny-ante stories.

Why don’t I write about Alaska? Because writing is an escape for me. I write to forget about Alaska, not to relive it.

But they can’t understand, can they? They’ve always been safe. Even when they go out zombie hunting, they’re relatively safe. They have guns and kevlar vests and each other for backup, plus the training to properly hunt and kill. It’s exciting for Shaun to be an Irwin precisely because it’s safe. He’s made a choice. 

He’s never had to sit on the floor of a bathroom, with his mother wrapped around him, listening to the sounds of his aunt as she converted outside the door, because she ran out of bullets before running out of zombies. He never sat at the kitchen table in the morning and wondered which of his friends would be absent from school that day, never to return. We had a real, physical school for a while, because our town was determined to keep things as “normal” as possible. As if what was “normal” before 2014 would ever be normal again, but bless them, they tried for a while. But the bodies at the desks dwindled, either because their parents were too scared, or because the kids ceased to be kids anymore. Eventually, we moved to a virtual school, like everyone else. But even then, each week, there would be more blank windows where a familiar face used to be. 

It’s not like I don’t use the emotions I felt in Alaska in my stories. I don’t think you can properly write about pain, loss, or grief until you’ve experienced them. Which is one of the reasons why Georgia makes a great Newsie. She can be impartial - emotions don’t seep into her news reports, because she hasn’t experienced the worst of them. 

Maybe that’s not fair. I know Georgia and Shaun haven’t had the easiest lives. Their parents are … well, they can be a problem. But in a strange way, I understand Mr. and Mrs. Mason. They grieved, and they came out the other side much harder people. And their hardness created Georgia and Shaun. 

I guess it’s a reminder that we’re all connected. That what we do affects other people. But, the thing is, I don’t really want to live in a world where Georgia and Shaun are the norm - where we have to be like them in order to survive. 

Anyway. The point is, I don’t want to write about Alaska. Those memories are mine, and I don’t want to share them with the entire world. Because where was the world when we needed them? 

*

_March 25th, 2040_

I made a mistake.

Oh God, that sounds so cold. So clean. Miswiring one of the cameras so that I filmed an empty trailer instead of Ryman’s interview with the locals in Arizona was a mistake. Letting Maggie borrow my vintage Firefly figurines was a mistake. Wearing the hot pink cardigan with the yellow jeans was a mistake. 

I killed a girl. More than one girl, but she’s the one who haunts me.

Not with my own two hands, of course. But I caused it. I was able to reason my way out of Eakly. There were crazy people everywhere, Chuck said, and the saboteurs could be anyone. The people we work for were good people, and they just wanted to discredit Senator Ryman, not kill him. I believed that. I think Chuck believed it, too. I guess the alternative was too much to consider. It still is, to be honest. But I have to. I’m good at pretending, but in the end, I’m not stupid. 

I never met Rebecca Ryman. One night, before Eakly, the senator sat down with me and told me all sorts of things about his kids. He was slightly drunk, I think, but he was still sharp. When I reminded him that he was still talking to the press, he just smiled. “You’re not Georgia, Miss Meissonier,” he said. “I think you have a different perspective on life. One that appreciates personal stories without thinking about angles.” But he was wrong. I do think about angles, all the time. They’re just different angles than Georgia uses. “You remind me a bit of Rebecca,” he continued. It was something about the way we look when we’re listening, he told me, and the way we’re both stubborn enough to continue to do things our own way even after listening. 

There, I guess, he was right. I was too stubborn to listen to my gut after Eakly. And now Rebecca Ryman is dead, and it’s my fault. 

Maybe there isn’t a better way to run the world. Maybe we never had any hope in Alaska, and maybe I wasn’t changing the country for the better. But I still believe that God is with me, even in these darkest hours, and that He will help me make the choices I need to make.

The dead are mine. I carry their ghosts with me, and they cry for atonement. 

*

_and the Earth turns, as bodies burn_  
 _and night goes up in flames_  
 _In the cool dawn, a righteous pawn_  
 _sees what her lies became_  
 _For your soul, to pay the toll_  
 _the boatman will impose_  
 _I leave the truth, the blush of youth_  
 _that led to your repose_

_**\- From “Rebecca”, an unpublished poem by Georgette “Buffy” Meissonier** _


End file.
